Indonesians of Indian Origin
By SILVIA VIGNATO
Since the Indonesian Bureau of Statistics does not publish any data on either ethnic background or religious affiliation of Indonesian citizens, the exact number of ethnic Indians who are Indonesian nationals is, at least to my knowledge, unknown. Most Indonesians of ethnic Indian origin live in the province of North Sumatra where I have conducted intense fieldwork in connection with my docteral thesis dedicated to the topic of 'Hinduism among the Karo and the Tamils of North Sumatra'. Many Indians had emigrated to Medan and its hinterland when the large plantations were founded by Western corporations (e.g. 'Good Year') in the late-nineteenth century. Others, especially the Sindhis, had come to Indonesia, both to North Sumatra and to Jakarta, after India's partition. The Indonesians of Indian origin, however, do not make a very close-knit group. In North Sumatra, they consist of southern Indians (about fifteen thousand Tamils) as well as northern Indians (approximately five thousand Sikhs and presumably around fifty Sindhis). This highly heterogeneous group is further divided along caste as well as occupational lines. Hence, it is divided on the basis of Indian language, caste, property, and rites. A strong feeling of loss of origins, though, is shared by all.Most Indonesians of Tamil and Sikh origin have never set their foot on Indian soil and never will. They mainly, but not exclusively, keep to themselves as a community, because their religion keeps them from intermarrying with the locals. They neither read nor write Tamil or Gujerati which they, however, speak. They ignore all that makes India a state, i.e. Indian history, modern Indian habits, schooling in either the Hindi or English language, etc. Only two sources of knowledge about the land of their forefathers are available to the largest part of the two communities: fading stories told and retold by four generations and Hindi films which they watch both on rented video tapes and on Indonesian television. My own fieldwork was exclusively concerned with the Tamils and the Sindhis, since it dealt with the development of Hinduism in North Sumatra. For the Tamils, 'India' is a migrants' image of rural Tamil Nadu originating from the time before 1945. When mediated through the Hindi films, 'India' is perceived as a modern society where Hinduism, pop songs and popular dances as well as modern notions of 'love' play a major role. The few rich members of the community who have been to India, and who still have relations there, basically go there either for health care, considered better and cheaper than in Indonesia, or for very official religious matters, for instance, when they tried to establish contacts with the Shankaracharya Madam of Kanchipuram. It was a very partial experience they brought home, though.
The feeling of loss is stronger among the Sindhis who first had to escape from the newly founded Pakistan and then from India as well (mainly from Bombay). But because they still belong to a transnational Sindhi trade organization, the headquarters of which are largely based in Bombay, and because they travel within the whole Sindhi world diaspora, their image of India is based on experience and hence more concrete than the Tamils' notion of India.
Though the time of emigration becomes a more distant past for everyone, India has recently become closer due to better economic relations and a general improvement of communication. Thus, the Indonesians of Indian origin in North Sumatra now begin to mix more, not only among themselves, but also with economic partners and with religious institutions in India. *
Silvia Vignato, CNRS
E-mail: silvig@compuserve.com